Fright Club

While I know this is hardly an original thought, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in the last two years is that I spent a lot of time talking about things I would like to do, or feel like I should do to improve my life, but very little time actually doing them. While there are those people we all know and love to hate who are annoyingly proactive, most of us are pretty awful at getting off our excuse ridden arses.

This is my call to arms, my declaration of intent, join the revolution!

Well either that or get real with yourself about why you aren’t achieving your goals and accept it’s you, not the world, or circumstances, or timing, or whatever.

It doesn’t have to be something huge or dramatic, it could just be breaking the taboo of telling someone you care about, that you do. Or quit your Customer Service job and become a Marine Biologist. The point is to do something the frightens you a little or a lot, do it now, or set the wheels in motion today. Then if you want, encourage others to do the same, and tell us about it here if you like. After all the first two rules of Fright Club are that “You Do Talk About Fright Club!”

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So you talk the talk eh? What have you done lately? Well the two things I decided to do were learn to play the guitar and start up this website. I have some ideas bouncing around for another wider web concept but we’ll get this one off the ground first.

Totally agree. I’m all about saying yes to as many things as poss and see where it leads. Sometimes it’s great, other times it leads to been deported from Russia and other times it’s boring. But saying yes generates campfire stories, specially when things go wrong. All about doing as much as possible this year. Totally agree Eamon

Eamon I totally agree, I’m currently hatching a plan to leave the job I hate which daily turns my brain to mulch, to embark on a new and totally different career. It’s still in embryonic stages hence the lack of a full name but Eamon you’ll know who this is. Life can be sh*t and you gave to make your own luck!

I am forever living in fear, every day I start work I am in perpetual fear I’ll be found out. Then the end of the day comes and I’m still living in fear. Been like that since I started running my own business so yeah that’s quite fun. This year I’m branching out and learning to be better at something other people tell me I’m good at and me in my own inimitable fashion kind of nonchalantly think I’m ‘so so’ at. That’s kind of scary as it will open up all kinds of doors.

This is an interesting follow up from the initial point. You say you live everyday outside your comfort zone since you started running your own business, (although it sounds like it is going very well). Is this a good thing for a sustained period? Do you not feel permanently stressed by pushing yourself all the time? Or are you one of these people that thrive on the pressure?

To be honest I probably live every day outside of my comfort zone period. Not necessarily just running my own business and all that brings but doing that alongside bringing up 2 young children and nurturing a 19 year old into adulthood too. All that’s completely out of my comfort zone. I’d challenge anyone to say it isn’t.

My comfort zone is reading a book, playing a video game, watching a movie, sitting down with my wife and just enjoying the moment. That’s comfort, everything else you just roll your sleeves up and have a go and hope it turns out the best you can possibly make it. Parenting in particular is just a work in progress on a daily basis, there’s no planning you can possibly do for that, you just do.

I’m not stressed by that at all, far from it, I’m super laid back, it’s my thing, until now I never really questioned whether or not it was a challenge, or there was such a thing as a comfort zone but having reflected I guess yes then most of my waking day is spent outside of that mythical comfort zone.

And frankly that’s not really a bad thing, in the big scheme of things outside of my comfort zone isn’t such a bad place to be bearing in mind I could be living in a hut walking 4 miles everyday with no shoes to go and fetch a bucket of water.

That’s my perspective, unless you are genuinely saving lives (aka a doctor or whatever), then none of us are or have a particularly stressful life really if you have a realistic context in how you approach things, even you, though I’m not making light or remotely attempting to make you feel any better at all about your circumstances, yourself on this virtual scale of life haven’t got it that bad vs some dude suffering the same or worse ailments without the love and warmth of his/her family and friends around them.

So given that I don’t feel any pressure, the worst that can happen is what? I fail? so what, I go do something else and try that. I don’t see any value in getting stressed or worrying too much about what’s going to happen. I am not a planner.

In your position I’m quite honestly unsure how I’d react given I’ve spent the last 5 years truly understanding why I am how I am, I’m quite in awe how you’ve handled it and though I know now and again you need a man hug in the main I can only admire how you’ve taken this on and adapted to it in a roundly positive way.

No clue how I’d deal with it, though from the other side, me dealing with your news I was quite surprised what an impact it made on me (cried for about 3 days straight) bearing in mind from the age of 17 I’d accepted my lot in life and the mantra ‘c’est la vie’ was almost my battlecry because I’d been and id’ed the body of my best friend that just 7 days before we’d been facedown dribbling like loonies on our final bender of the holiday, what’s the worst that can happen after that?!

So yeah your news turned out was quite a shocker as to my own personal response to it, which I’ve never shared (all of this is part of some epic letter thing I wrote a while back trying to explain it to myself but god it was long so I ditched it in favour of man hugs ;)) with you at all. So really it just goes to show you that there’s always something else out there which can knock you off the rails, in a good or bad way, and allow you (if you’re a positive type person) to re-evaluate your stance on things, life, the universe and everything.

That was a sort of way off topic, kind of, reply but I hope you get the gist of what I’m trying to say. I’m very laid back, in the main I’m comfortable actually living outside of anything that would remotely resemble a zone of comfort

Well it looks like this club is building in membership. We are going to have to find an abandoned house in the middle of a derelict part of town as our base. I will see if there’s an anarchist clothing website where we can buy balaclavas in bulk. Then it’s off to the local plastic surgery centre for the soap ingredients.

If any of you didn’t get the original film reference of Fright Club, all these sounds very bizarre, I’m sure:-)

The human body is made up of many bones, one being the Wish Bone, probably the most exercised bone in the body. It is a close second to the Jaw Bone. Strange how we so often neglect to exercise the Back Bone, which I feel is a part of what you are saying Eamon